Wednesday, September 25, 2013

Trends (Follow-up)

I had some follow-up thoughts after the post on Thursday.

First, EA Sports has some huge opportunities in the "toy" space. What about making some high-quality "legends" figures for Madden, and when you buy them and put them in the "stadium" portal, you can use them in the game?

Yeah, that's evil. It's a natural, though, and you could do it with FIFA as well. And if the figures are worth collecting on their own, it's an additional sources of sales momentum. Plus there could be promotional tie-ins with fast food franchises. The marketing opportunities are disturbingly endless.

Eli 12.1 treasures an NHL bobblehead he got from a friend (who got it from a Happy Meal at a Canadian McDonald's). Make the figures bobbleheads, and it's even better.

Really, what we're talking about here are a physical form of IAP (in-app purchases), except the base game isn't free. So buy the game, buy the figures, and they grant you additional content/powers in the game. That's just IAP in another form.

Okay, so what other series are naturals for this toy trend? You guys sent me a list:
--Star Wars
--LEGO
--Pokemon (already available in Pokemon Rumble U)
--Angry Birds (already available in Angry Birds Telepods)

Plus the new Skylanders this fall (Swap Force) will have a twist, literally: upper and lower bodies of figures are interchangeable.

There's no end to this until the genre crashes, and it will. Until then, it's going to pervasive and invasive and every other "vasive". Every game that can possibly cram some kind of tie-in around physical toys with an in-game use is going to have them.